Mary Leakey (1913 - 1996)



Mary Douglas Leakey was a British paleoanthropologist who discovered the first fossilised Proconsul skull, an extinct ape which is now believed to be ancestral to humans. For much of her career she worked with her husband, Louis Leakey, at Olduvai Gorge, where they uncovered fossils of ancient hominines and the earliest hominins, as well as the stone tools produced by the latter group. Mary Leakey developed a system for classifying the stone tools found at Olduvai. In 1972, after the death of her husband, Leakey became director of excavations at Olduvai. She maintained the Leakey family tradition of palaeoanthropology by training her son, Richard, in the field.

Known for
Discovered the Laetoli footprints, and at the Laetoli site she discovered hominin fossils that were more than 3.75 million years old.

Discovered fifteen new species of animal. She also brought about the naming of a new genus.

Excavations at Njoro River Cave (with Louis Leakey), 1950

Olduvai Gorge: Excavations in Beds I and II, 1960–1963, 1971

Olduvai Gorge: My Search for Early Man, 1979

Africa's Vanishing Art: The Rock Paintings of Tanzania, 1983

Disclosing the Past, 1984

Find more
Wikipedia

Leakey Foundation